Tracking a hacker who extorted millions through ransomware attacks - The Fifth Estate
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- Опубліковано 9 лис 2022
- We examine the case of a Canadian government worker who had a secret life as a hacker with NetWalker, a criminal ransomware gang. Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins amassed millions of dollars in bitcoin by threatening to expose the private digital information of victims if they didn’t pay up. We reveal how he did it, the digital trail of destruction and how he got caught.
Read more: www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/f...
#Ransomware #Cybercrime #Hacker
producer/director
LINDA GUERRIERO
writer
MARIE-MAUDE DENIS
associate producer
ROXANNA WOLOSHYN
video editor
NAIRE BAHJAT
principal cinematography
JONATHAN CASTELL
additional cinematography
ADRIAN DI VIRGILIO
PASCAL LEBLOND
TREVOR LYONS
RAPHAEL TREMBLAY
for Radio-Canada’s Enquête
producer/director
LAURENCE MATHIEU-LEGER
associate producer
MICHAEL DEETJENS
principal cinematography
CARL MONDELLO
additional cinematography
FRANCOIS GENEST
video editors
LAURENCE MATHIEU-LEGER
BERNARD LAPOINTE
archival material
C-SPAN
PARAMOUNT GLOBAL
POND5
RCMP
REUTERS
UA-cam/ APACHE INDIAN / MANGO MUSIC
UA-cam/APPALACHES VIDEO
UA-cam/ SOUTH PARK STUDIOS
UA-cam/VACHON
graphic designers
JAKE BOONE
FROILAN UNTALASCO
graphic director
JEFF GOLDHAR
visual research
LESLIE MORRISON
media management
ABRAHAM BARMADA
MATT GUERIN
post audio
RICK STARKS
RON SEARLES
colourist
SCOTT McINTYRE
rollout producer
LEANNE STEPNOW
social media producer
AVNEET DHILLON
MARÍA JOSÉ BURGOS
digital producer
JANET DAVISON
theme music
STEVE D'ANGELO
project manager
VICTOR KERR
associate director
NANCI KING
packaging editor
ALESSIA PROTOMANNI
resource coordinators
MEGAN BEECKMANS
CHAHAT DESAI
SAM NAR
coordinating associate director
RHONDA KIRKPATRICK
senior producer
ALLYA DAVIDSON
executive producer
DIANA SWAIN
original broadcast
NOVEMBER 10, 2022
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About The Fifth Estate: For four decades The Fifth Estate has been Canada's premier investigative documentary program. Hosts Bob McKeown, Gillian Findlay, Mark Kelley and Steven D'Souza continue a tradition of provocative and fearless journalism. The Fifth Estate brings in-depth investigations that matter to Canadians - delivering a dazzling parade of political leaders, controversial characters and ordinary people whose lives were touched by triumph or tragedy.
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As someone who has worked in IT for many, many years I just want to say this: Keep backups. Good backups. Follow the 3,2,1 rule. 3 backups, on 2 different types of media, with 1 extra backup off-site in the cloud. Backing up a single computer can be as cheap as a few dollars per month. You have ZERO excuse for not backing up your data. If you run a business that uses computers in some way, you NEED to have a backup of your data. If you keep good backups, you will NEVER need to pay a ransom, EVER!!! Get these criminals out of business by backing up your data!!!
Thanks for the good advice
You keep screaming into that storm brother, eventually one of them will listen ;)
This SOB should NEVER be released from prison..............NEVER!!!🤬
Tell lana del Rey this lmao
Well what site or service do I use as I don't know how to back anything up but my booty 😂 lol really though.. what do I use?
How was he able to get a government job with a criminal record for drugs? Incredible
I know right?! Government background checks require so much paperwork and some, probably the case for jobs in IT, take months to process.
Cause government are the criminals
Exactly my thoughts!! How sad
Canada
Some places it's a requirement 😉
I worked for a company in the 90's that, in addition to the regular system backups, backed up all data every evening to two external drives locally, and two external drives for removal to two different off site locations that were driven off by two different employees every evening. These drives were not accessible by the network except for the backup process. If data needed to be recovered, it was first accessed by an independent user who could copy the drives to another computer for decryption and recovery, but the backups never touched the network. I am sure things have gotten easier now, but having a two physical drives in secure locations struck me as a good idea.
That's not paranoia, its responsibility. Unplugged physical backups are a no-brainer.
Registered nurse here, I worked for one of the biggest research/teaching hospital in the US and I witnessed this ransomeware thing first hand. We had no access to our charting system for about 2weeks which was no fun. Imagine having to care for 5 patients while doing everything without a computer, all of that during Covid. This was the scariest time of my nursing career because not just patients safety was at all time high but, nurses and most healthcare workers.
Wow His Greed level took him to the moon. He had over $20 M and still fishing for 300K smh. With that kind of money you could’ve gone in a different country and live a normal life until God calls him. I guess he wasn’t that smart after all.
My thought too. He decided to hide away the money and live a middle class life. he’s in a cell till he’s 70 now lol
Are we sure God will call him? Or will God just send him?
Greed breeds greed. It always has.
I hope he didn't bet it all on one race.
@@rwnagelAh its easy all he has to do is ask his God for forgiveness 😂
But a man who gives his life to being the the most kind and helpful 😊 will spend eternity in a lake of fire 🔥 Because he believes in science ?
Want to avoid getting wiped out by ransomware? Do weekly backups, but dont override the previous backup.
Keep all backups in "cold storage", meaning on removable drives etc so theyre not connected to any system, no internet and so on.
Highly sensitive files you keep segregated in entirely separate systems and networks, each file it contains you have individually encrypted with a separate key, so if one is compromised the others wont be.
This drastically reduces the footprint and potential damages that can result from a breach.
I work in cyber security at Mandiant as full time cyber threat intel analyst and im also on the penetration test red team.
These are just a couple of the things we recommend to all our clients
The Fifth Estate's investigation and presentation is beyond compare.
Really?
@@demigog9523 Its pathetic these comments. CBC staff making profiles top comment lol.
Absolutely agree. I love it when a new episode drops.
Comparable ..?
@@rubytuesday5412 professional liers got lots of people fooled
It’s shame if a company that gets hacked doesn’t tell it’s clients of a hack. Very dishonest and in the end helps the hackers.
Not true. FireEye.
Congratulations to law enforcement and the cooperation demonstrated. The governments around the world and the respective criminal justice systems must do everything possible to manage this criminal cancer.
How's that leather taste ?
Imagine you run a big company...and don't have any backups...
with revenue of over 30 mil
Having or not having backups is not always the issue. There's also the threat of sensitive data being published (and the public outcry that will go with that). For most companies that's the bigger problem, backups don't make a difference here
Thats insane its like running a big bank or any kind of bank and not having security
If he were truly remorseful he would have cooperated fully by naming his co-conspirators. He would have tried to help the current victims. He felt no remorse other than regretting that he was caught.
I wish we didn't have the internet. We used to kick back and listen to music, faces not glued to our screens. '90's were good.
As you watch the internet.
And message on the internet About the internet you know, you could just put down the internet and go outside like before I right.. It's literally just right outside your front door... yeah, stop it.. lol
@@santoro7072 LoL 😂, touche
Commendable documentary by The Fifth Estate.
Phenomenal journalism
The fifth estate never fails to impress!
Yes I agree. CBC Govt of Canada, exposing two Federal Govt departments funding one of their own who was let into Canada by the Federal Govt to scam other govt agencies in the U.S. All supported by Tru Dope. Oh he was a drug dealer not prosecuted for 3 years.
@@dashcan8479 When you type I could hear circus music.
@@ottodietz7644 No more warnings, you are everywhere harassing commenters.
@@sheilacoulton775 are you working for UA-cam? Or are you just against freedom of speech?
@@Apocalypse_Cow Insider, I'd say.
The punishment for this should be VERY severe.
He got 20 years
Yeah like all those billionaires that ruined us.
@@ottodietz7644 When making accusations you need to provide evidence, Just because you speak it does not make it true.
But WHO is the real perpetrator?
How about charging Fauci and Gates and cohorts for TREASON over the PLANDEMIC?
43:10 The opposite of a teenager in his parent's basement is a parent in his teenager's basement.
Let’s hope he doesn’t have access to a computer in Prison!
I've heard of this series, but l lived in a different country. It must have been pretty good because it was on for quite awhile. Now, l can see it. This is great!
There needs to be more of this kind of unified front against these types of cyber criminals.
If Sebastien was seriously sorry, he would have dropped the names of the rest of the Netwalker gang
The clues why he didn't are littered throughout.
That wouldn't be smart cause the network can harm your folks like relatives, friends, and acquaintances just to teach you a lesson and set an example to anyone who thinks of taking that route.
THANKS FOR THE VIDEO.
None of these companies cared enough about their clients to hire security specialists to protect their data.
not in the budget
You are portraying him as a smart hacker. He is just a punk who know where to click with malicious intent. I am a proud programmer and our knowledge is so beyond what you are presenting. But I agree these punks needs to go to jail Period.
Can't get into many specifics, but the NetWalker attacks were quite sophisticated and not spray and pray ransomware. (Source, I'm in this video)
@@arthurkeech So you know who was really behind it all.
You must be a budget programmer. Do you work for K-Mart ? scrub
Hahaha if this isn’t a copypasta already it should be . “Proud programmer “ hahaha
Yours is the attitude that makes it so easy for hackers to get in.
Scary to think how much our data is insecure. Definitely costly but this is the new arena of crime.
It's easy to say "I was wrong" but the company he victimized specially the hospitals during COVID-19 is unforgivable, the sentence should be death penalty.
imagine what pentagon does...
Oh please. Fake plandemic
Lives may have been lost when he hacked health care systems! He needs LIFE IN PRISON!!!
May have been...proof? Oh yeah he may have..
@@zdravo3543 nani
@@zdravo3543 99.9% someone didnt get their medication, or even the wrong one
Also probably some surgeries couldnt be done
@@zdravo3543 🤡
@@zdravo3543 Here's one: A ransomware attack on the Düsseldorf University Clinic occurred on September 10 which disabled 30 servers, impacting operations
• A critically ill patient was relocated to another hospital in Wuppertal (roughly 45 minutes away) and the delay in treatment caused her death
Thanks for Sharing God Bless You.
This documentary didn't even mention so much as once, how these hackers gained access to these systems. It would be nice to know what precautions to take.
It's mostly spearfishing a nobody. Get one of these computer illiterate to click a link. Reverse shell. Priv escalation. Pivot. Copy over the exe. Done.
@@50_Pence Thanks, worked like a charm. Now what I do say to this person...let me look....Frank J. Willis it says in his e-mail client. Do I go check to see if he has blackmail worthy stuff?
@@50_Pence yea right theres more to it. and how do you build an undetectable reverse shell
@@dariusvlogs3634 polymorphic encoding.
I think it’s simply because it’s still possibly an ongoing investigation
The punishment needs to be so over the top no one would risk doing this crime. Minimum 20yrs in prison mandatory.
Smart enough to hack a computer, but dumb enough to get caught.
Just 7 years lol! Imagine
Canada gives him 7 years ....USA 20 years.
Canada is generous .
canada is woke
@@lo2740 🙄
I'm Swedish and in Sweden (or Northern Europe for that matter) he would get a slap on the wrist.
There's a big waiting list to be a prisoner due to the cost of rent in Canada.
@@paythedevilwithbitcoin1162 lol if you was hacker u wont be telling people 🤣
Love this show
Man the USA has such reach. Like the sentence he got in Canada was nothing for the drugs he was moving. In the USA? He's going away forever.
In Canada there's waiting lists to be a prisoners due to the high cost of rent in Canada.
tremendous presentation, good job fifth estate
Excellent reporting. I had a chance to watch this is in French too
Sam Bankman:
Hold my beer
7 years you can steal that much money and you only get 7 years well geez it's almost worth doing the crime then for the amount he stole Canadian government should have at least given him 25 years
@Pay The Devil With Bitcoin I've had property managers who stole millions (my millions) and didn't do any jail time.
Happy to see Marie Maude in the fifth estate! She and her team are pure gold in the French show Enquete
annoying frog
@@ottodietz7644 Disrespect will not be tolerated,Freedom of speech does not protect Lies,Rumors,Gossip. If this continues you can be removed from UA-cam.
@@sheilacoulton775 🤣🤣🤣
The love of money is the root of all evil.
1 Timothy 6:10
The punishment is not nearly enough to deter these scum, under Federal law hacking for extortion, 1st offense up to 5 years, 2nd up to 10, keep in mind these are max sentences, you get charged with extortion hacking, if u have a good lawyer you could end up with no jail time, extortion hacking should be a minimum 20 years 1st offense, life 2nd offense, let some dirtbag know he could spend the next 20 years in prison with no parole he might think twice
That french speaking guy said dark web in the most American accent possible. It's the same in Belgium btw.
What?! The most american accent possible?!!! And that is supposed to be an offense?!
Shocking
Interesting..as a senior trying to learn Coding..I find this most intriguing..I think I'm learning more through ex hackers than I am Professors
you can learn coding for free from free code camp on youtube. i am not affiliated with them. i've been coding for over 20 years; if you want to learn coding, you can do it for free through that and related channels.
Disgusting lack of any modicum of human morality.
Very relevant to Australia at the moment. One of our biggest telcos Optus and also one of our biggest health care providers Medibank have recently been hacked.
Please read down! Thank you!
Really rensomware is very scary and is the biggest threat on internet ever.
He could’ve stopped working and moved to some warm country with ten million dollars only. Why so much greed for $30m…
Good for the judge🇿🇦
This is a great case for backing up files. Both sides carry responsibility.
Very interesting story. So glad Carlton Gammons is on our side💪🏻
It's 2022, anyone who is able to get attacked in this day and age have no business behind a computer.
chuckcar gets hacked all the time and them gives everyone bogus advice about how to unencrypt data
@ANTHRAX I'm not saying it's impossible to hit me, but I'm saying it's 2022, we know this problem exists and there's a lot of defense's one can put in place to make it extremely hard.
@@QuigleySharps45 pride cometh before the fall my brother
I love this Investigative show ❤
I😁 just live playing these machines-ah
Thanks,
City of St John New Brunswick was hit by a ransomware attacker I don't think the city paid but it really messed them up for a year or two
This is one of the few decent programs the cbc features.
Poor guy. Everyone is so mean.
I love this channel… ❤
This is scary. I back up my phone every twenty four hours and I have nothing on it that is valuable. I can’t imagine companies not hiring experts to backup their systems. It’s like having an expensive mansion and no insurance!!!!
I still use a rotary phone.
I DON T HAVE A PHONE.
dang rip to a real one
I am shocked that a university could even come up with $780,000. Universities don’t have money.
So many devils in this world, karma to all of them.
Canadian public employee lol😂😂
The moral of the story: 1. Non-logging VPN's and switch services between jobs. 2. Use public WIFI and have various logon points.
He should launch his ransomware on the prison computer : "Let me out or I erase all your datas" 😄
Best escape in history ^^
The hacker’s only problem is that he was not careful for a few days. Netwalker developers were never caught. If you know what you are doing and you have good security protocols, you are never caught
He'd already gotten rich.
Greedy and an adrenalin junky.
These ransom attacks only stop when you beef up security.
@@peterjongsma2779 I wouldn't really call it beefing up security, it's more like bringing your network security up to snuff. It should be the basis for developing any network. It blows me away how most companies and organizations don't want to put any money into their IT department and expect it to "just work".
@@That-Dude Its because IT often reports to the bean counters. I have turned down offers because the position reported to the VP of Finance. There is never enough money or time to do something properly the first time but there is unlimited time and money to fix the problems and pay ransoms. CFO mean cheap financial officer with no imagination.
It also helps if your located in the safe haven for hackers.....Russia.
@ANTHRAX u didnt hack anything llets be hoenst
Great idea!
The judge be like : Hack out of this, Bud
I am halfway through the video... I wonder if Rogers is gonna fess up? 😅 ... Rogers position is that the network went down because of "updates". Pfft... the doublespeak of update doesn't even really work. netwalker would be a new install. not an update. nonetheless it saddened me that the corporation lied that day... and it sucks the government either... didn't notice the lie... didnt care... or even supported it. 🙄
True.. every org that use active directory could be hack unless you make it harden..
I'd like to know how these ransomeware hackers get into someone's system + take control of the files.
This is so retro wave cyber chic.
It takes so many smart people to do this work.
This one:
Heat is rising as European super cartel is taken down in six countries.
Between 8-19 November, coordinated raids were carried out across Europe and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), targeting both the command-and-control centre and the logistical drugs trafficking infrastructure in Europe. A total of 49 suspects have been arrested during the course of this investigation. The drugpins considered as high-value targets by Europol had come together to form what was known as a ‘super cartel’ which controlled around one third of the cocaine trade in Europe.
These arrests are the culmination of parallel investigations run in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UAE with the support of Europol into the activities of this prolific criminal network involved in large-scale drugs trafficking and money laundering.
The scale of cocaine importation into Europe under the suspects’ control and command was massive and over 30 tonnes of drugs were seized by law enforcement over the course of the investigations.
Spain: Civil Guard (Guardia Civil)
France: National Police (Police Nationale - OFAST)
Belgium: Federal Judicial Police Brussels (Federale Gerechtelijke Politie Brussel/Police Judiciaire Fédérale de Bruxelles), Federal Judicial Police Antwerp (Federale Gerechtelijke Politie Antwerpen)
The Netherlands: National Police National Criminal Investigations Division and Police Unit Rotterdam (Nationale Politie - Dienst Landelijke Recherche en Eenheid Rotterdam)
United Arab Emirates: Ministry of Interior (وزارة الداخلية) Dubai Police Force (القيادة العامة لشرطة دبي)
United States: US Drug Enforcement Administration
Spain: 13 arrests + 2 High-Value Targets arrested in Dubai
France: 6 arrests + 2 High-Value Targets arrested in Dubai
Belgium: 10 arrests
The Netherlands: 14 arrests in 2021 and 2 High-Value Targets arrested in Dubai
In the framework of intelligence activities underway with its operational counterparts, Europol developed reliable intelligence concerning a drug trafficking cartel flooding Europe with cocaine. The main targets, who used encrypted communications to organise the shipments, were identified in the participating authorities.
Europol has since then hosted multiple coordination meetings in the past 2 years in order to bring together the different countries working on the same targets to establish a joint strategy to bring down the whole network. More than 10 operational meetings took place at Europol in this period.
In addition, Europol has been provided continuous intelligence development and analysis to support the field investigators. During the action, Europol facilitated the real-time coordination among all the partners involved, ensuring swift tactical decisions to adjust the strategy as required.
Eurojust provided cross-border judicial support to the French and Belgian authorities regarding seven arrests in both countries and organised four coordination meetings to prepare for these actions
@@nlx78Whac-A-Mole...somebody will replace them. Such is the futility of the war on drugs.
I was not expecting Gatineau to be mentioned in this story.
yeah everbody knows Medicine Hat is the home of hacking
Odd timing to release this considering the FTX scandal from this week.
A lot can be said for good ol' pen & paper!
Do you own shares in Bic?
Great report!
This is exactly what happened to me 😵💫😤
Sure it is
I can unencryopt YER data FER free
Incredible stories are good
Wait what ...to fill n arena..massive statement that......interesting doco...
Always back up your data and keep it OFFLINE . Then if something does happen, you can recover. I despise hackers.
Maybe...I was once called to an emergency where a company's hard drive on a Honeywell Mid range (yes, it was a long time ago) had failed and the company wanted to get a new drive and restore the system. When I arrived, I was told there were daily backups, weekly backups, and monthly backups all on tape. I was shown the storage room with all the racks of tapes. So I installed the replacement drive and tried to restore a daily backup tape. No luck...the tape was blank. I tried a weekly backup...also blank. I asked if anyone had ever restored any of the tapes in the past and was told it had never been necessary. The obvious answer was no one had ever checked to see if the backup process actually worked.
18:34 dude has the same eyes as Mr. Robot lmao
Say your prayers to help everyone god bless guys
Victims won’t divulge simply because being public with that will ruin their business.
20 years - quite right
Very interesting
This is insane.
Yes it is because it's obviously one big psyop carried out by the FBI and it's affiliates.
@@demigog9523 🤡
Have pride in your craftsmanship. You’ll go places.
You are referring to criminal activity. Just another thug.
Lazy criminals..
"Ransomware as a Service" 😳
Does marie maude host enquete and fifth estate now?
The hacking business, one of the most unstoppable criminal business will continue growing up every day.
Everyone pays for corruption too but politicians get out in 2-3 years. Maybe apply the logic everywhere? Good documentary! Stay clean and you'll sleep well people
"And all you files ar Gone " Question How long has that ransomware been running on that computer ? What about backups ? Anti mallware ? the defender ?
Huge amounts of power wasted and IT STILL knocks down computers.
The FBI found the WhatsApp number of Hushpuppi on this guy phone. That's how Hushpuppi was caught.
The people breaking the software are smarter then the people writing the software.
Its not just breaking software or crashing a firewall...the company's own employees can compromise the system security either unwittingly or deliberately.
We need outstanding upper-level cyber security officers to control such attacks. and this can be done at Govt level.
You need to back up data.
24:57 _".. we knew that once we took their server down the netwalker software would cease to operate ..."_
So, a group of people depending on targets that don't do a rolling incremental backup on wtite-only memory didn't care to have multiple distributed backups of their own software?
In a certain sense that might be even called "honest", to allow to be vulnerable yourself in the same way that you expect your targets to be vulnerable.
And how did the police know that in advance? That maybe much like with the Hydra in Greek mythology two other servers, activated on a kind of a dead man switch on the server that was shutdown wouldn't pop up within minutes?
I feel the retelling of the story skipped over some important aspects, probably for good reasons.
It’s a authority thing too
we will do our share....
This happened to me 2 months ago . but i had backups OFFLINE! . i didn't even read the threat TXT doc . i just started FORMATING HAHAHA . I AM CANADIAN
7 years in Canada, what a joke. How many victims? No matter how much time you give him, he will get out and commit crime again. 20 years in the US, this will save many future victims.